What It’s Like to Be Gay at Work Right Now

what it means to be gay at work. In the clip you just heard is from Nancy, a W and I C podcast about lgbt Q issues, and we're going to have more from that show and here from its hosts in a bit right now. We thought it was a particularly good time to ask the question of what it's like to be gay at work? Yeah, so, over last ten years, there have been more protections for gay people,

both in and outside the workplace. Of course, we all know of the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage and the shifting cultural norms that came with that, but there was also some legal changes that happened. Um the Obama administration issued executive orders that were meant to protect the LGBT community, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission also issued guidance that was supposed to protect the same people.

Of course, all that has changed in the last ten months with the new administration, which hasn't been as friendly and i'd say more hostile to that community. And in the past couple of weeks, this tension between the old administration's policies and the new administration's policy has kind of come to a head. There's a case that's moving through the courts right now that centers on a man who said he was fired for being gay. In the past.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had to argue that he was protected by Title seven of the Civil Rights Act, which protects against discrimination on the basis of several things, including sex, but not sexual orientation. But the e o C had argued that sexual orientation goes hand in hand with sex discrimination. Now, however, the Department of Justice, led by Jeff Sessions, is arguing against that position in the

very same case. So the government is actually arguing with itself over whether or not you are protected from discrimination if you're gay. And this isn't the first time that in the short ten months of the administration that Trump has sent negative signals to that community. Over the summer, he issued a ban on transgender people serving in the military openly, and by some estimates, that is the largest

employer of trans people. That's a huge number of people who suddenly have their employment status just thrown into doubt. And even if you're not a member of that group, even if you aren't actively being discriminated against. I think all of these big picture policy changes have a way of trickling down into everyday cultural and social norms, and so we wanted to use the rest of the episode to talk about what day to day life is really like at work if you're gay. One question is whether

to be out at work at all. We asked a few people how they made that decision. So I've always been out at work, and I think part of that is because there's evidence of me being gay all over my resume, so I kind of haven't given myself much

of a choice there um. But I think mostly it's because I work in a progressive university environment where there's really just not much of a downside to being open, and the way I usually handle it in a new work relationship is just by really casually men training in a conversation, you know, something that my husband and I

were talking about the night before. UM. I also think that for my first job, being gay and talking about that in the interview was strangely a huge part of why I got that first job and ended up being a really queer team that I was joining. UM. So this whole being out at work thing has worked out

pretty well for me so far. I am out at work because when I was younger, I didn't have many role models, and I was constantly looking for people who I thought were LGBT, and I'd have these fantasies about, Oh, maybe he's going to come out so I can just be myself, or she's going to tell me that she's a lesbian and I can say I am too. And

I never found those people. And UM, I literally come out every day every time I meet somebody new, in every new situation, when I have a new employee, and UM, you know, my thought is that if I can uh impact one person who finds some strength or comfort in knowing that, um that I'm with them, then you know, it means the world to me. So that's why I'm out of work. In the first few jobs I had in my early twenties, I wasn't out. I think some of it was being young and not knowing if it

was appropriate or safe. But at my current position, I've been out since day one. Part of it was actually just happenstance. A coworker to me into a conversation about the other gays in the office, and I just went with it because I was a gay in the office. But I feel like it's a luxury to be in an office where being out as something so accepted and undramatic that I never even really had to come out there at all. Deciding whether to come out is just

one part of the equation. Our guests today are going to talk about the many other things LGBTQ people experience at work. Kathy Too and Tobin Low host w n y c's Nancy Podcast. They're in the middle of a series of episodes called Out at Work. So obviously you two are out at work now, um, in your current jobs. But has that always been the case that this is this something you've negotiated at previous jobs. For me, I would say I've always been in sort of let's say,

crunchy fields. So I was a classical musician. For a while, it was a cellist, and and then I got into public radio. So it always has felt like I've been

in very queer friendly kinds of fields. So for me, I would I feel like the ways it's manifested have been in the more subtle ways of trying to navigate somebody who asked about my girlfriend and then me having to politely navigate them towards no, I don't have a partner right now, or I don't have a boyfriend right now, or I do have a boyfriend, so that this sort of like everyday office politics, I guess, is what I

would say. I've had to navigate. Yeah, and ever since I've been out, I haven't every job I've been in anyways, I've never hit it from anybody, except for one specific job in which I didn't feel safe, But other than that, I feel like i've been I've been pretty out right. And now of course we're professionally gay. Kathy, can you go into why you didn't feel safe being out at that job? Yeah? Well, now everybody's like, what is the job? Um?

I've worked as an E M T for Ambience Company for about a year, like right out of college, and the people that I was working with on a daily basis, it just felt like, well, first of all, I heard comments that were fairly homophobic. And I don't want to say that this is true for like the entire health industry. This is very specific to my ambulance, I would say. But it wasn't like I made up a life for myself.

I just didn't talk about it. And after that I decided, I was like, this is never gonna be a thing that I'm going to do again, because it just didn't feel even though it had nothing to do with my work at the time, it didn't feel like my coworkers knew me, and it didn't feel like I could really be myself at work. I was always a little bit on edge. I think, well, now you're in a role that's the complete opposite of that. At w hen y C's Nancy podcast, you um, as you just joked, you're

sort of professionally gay. So what's it like to have a job that's that's so tied to that identity. It's it's weird to swing all the way to the other side, because again I started feeling uncomfortable and like uncomfortable on both ends of the spectrum. But it's the thing that I've gotten a lot more used to talking about queerness. For a while, I think I felt like I didn't have the credentials or the knowledge or the history, or

didn't know about the history behind us. I couldn't. I didn't feel like I was qualified to talk about queerness generally. But then I realized, I'm just talking about myself and how I'm working through things every day, and at this workplace anyways, at this at this company, it's super accepted.

I think for me. When we were developing the show, you know, neither Kathy nor I have had jobs where our queerness is defined in that job, and so navigating how the show would incorporate that, I think we were both afraid, like Kathy was saying, that we would be coming off as quote unquote experts. And that's the thing we really didn't want for the show, because the experiences in the LGBTQ community are so diverse that nobody is

really like an expert. So I think the thing we pushed towards is what we love about radio is doing really story driven work and letting people speak from their personal experience um and that has I think enabled us to feel much more comfortable in these host roles as like professional gays, because really all anyone on the show

is responsible for is telling their own story. Open. When you were talking about how you have all these other considerations with being out of work and not just being gay, can you guys go into that a little bit more and talk about how maybe being professionally gay has changed

that dynamic. Sure. What I was sort of referencing is I think what we have found a lot in this project we're doing out at work, which is that I think people think about the concept being out at work as a yes or no question like are you out? Are you not out? Uh? And in truth, the answers are much more nuanced and much more complicated, and there's a lot to navigate and just aside from are you

out or not in the everyday interactions. And so for me, like, I think the interactions that I've had around being gay in the workplace how have been a lot more subtle. They've been like I said before, you know, talking about partners or I've also experienced the thing where maybe female

coworkers see me as the token ke coworker. So there's a lot of fashion advice and um uh maybe wanting to talk about sexual escapades because there's an assumption that like I maybe game to talk about that, which maybe I am, maybe I'm not. But it fair. You do give me passion advice, that's true. I do give you fashion advice. But you're a special exception. So you know

you you do that subtle navigation every day. And I should say, like in the spectrum of the the LGBT experience at work, that is a very easy and subtle thing to have to deal with. We've heard from people who have to deal with you know, how do you navigate sharing your pronouns in the workplace, How do you navigate transition in the workplace? How do you navigate if

you might get five aired for coming out? So those are sort of the big things that this project is asking um forgetting the second part of the question, Oh, how does being a professional k change that? It's funny because it's in my job title now, so anyone who's meaning me it's like part of the it's part you know, it might as well be on my business card like noted homosexual. Um, So that that has changed, and that in some ways it makes it way easier to navigate

because it's it's just on its face what it is. Yeah. And I used to signal that on my resume, that sort of thing, because I didn't want to work with people that weren't going to be okay with it, and now it is it is kind of I mean, I should put on my website, to be honest. So, as you say, it's it's a lot more complicated than just deciding whether to be out or not at work and then just being done with it. And you did an

episode called does Your Boss Know You're Gay? What are some of the stories that you uncovered doing that episod owdn the things that you learned about navigating all that right, So we talked to a teacher who you know, you hear this phrase thrown around sometimes when you talk about being gay in the workplace, which is married on Sunday, fired on Monday. Um. And it's this idea that you can have the legal rights of marriage in this country, but if your employer is not okay with it, you

could lose employment. Um. And we talked to a teacher who quite literally had that happened to him. Um. He got married. He had been working as a teacher and then a substitute teacher at this one school for many years. Um. And then when he shared on Facebook that he was planning to get married, he was let go from his job. It was a it was a Catholic high school. One of the things that struck me about it was that he was he was sort of out at work before that.

His colleagues and his principle knew that he was gay and it and it goes to the confusion when you might have an employer who you know at the higher levels has different values than your immediate co workers. So it's like he was out in one way, but then he became two out for for his employer. And I that seems like one of the subtle, nuanced ways that it isn't just about, you know, it isn't just one decision whether to be out or not. It's who you come out to. Oh. Absolutely, And I mean we should

say that that teacher's name is Lonnie Billard. Um. And I also want to shout out our producer Matt Collette, who handled the reporting on that story. Um. Yeah, and

I think you're absolutely right. Like the thing that we have heard from a lot of people who have responded to us in this project is We've heard from a lot of educators, especially like teachers and principles who I think I have to really think about this and really think about what it means to be out at work and what it means to be out to their students UM and there seems to be a lot of nuance there and how you figure that out as a teacher. YEA.

After your episode, you asked people to send in their experiences of being lgbt Q at work. What are some of the other things that you've found from that Some examples that we've had come in through our survey. I've seen a couple of people at least who have chosen to wear like little buttons that have their pronouns on them, and that's like a very clever way of handling being

out at the workplace. We've also seen people who have shared UH their transition with a boss and then that boss went to um HR and then it was shared with the entire company. So we've also seen people who try to control who they come out to and then sort of in the company, not knowing how to handle it, it ends up coming out to everyone UM and then also we see a lot of people who fall in this gray area category of sort of out to some people, not out to everyone, or maybe they are out about

their gender identity but not out about their sexual identity. Um, so it takes all forms. It's like a thing that we we've seen a lot of in this survey. We found that a lot of especially people who identify as bisexual, feel conflicted in their responsibility to be out at work, especially if they're currently in an opposite sex partnership in which maybe their queerness is not obvious if they are

talking about their partner. So we've had We've heard from a lot of bisexual people saying I'd like to be out or I'm not sure what my responsibility to share this with my coworkers is. Because there's also a lot of stigma against bisexual people, so sharing it comes with all of these unfortunate attachments where people assume promiscuity or people assume, um, you know, quote unquote greediness. So that we saw a lot of bisexual angst in responses. It's

interesting you bring that up. I wrote a story about the bisexual pay gap, and I got so many responses

of people not believing me that that was a thing. Yeah, that is that is a very real thing that people I think for a long time have assumes that bisexuality is stop on the way to gay town is like a very popular saying, which you know, I think right now there's this real claiming of bisexuality as its own true thing and a lot of bisexual pride coming out, and it's unfortunate to hear that you've got that kind

of pushed back. One thing I noticed about both your episode and what you're telling us now about what you're hearing from your listeners is that if you're LGBTQ, there's just so much more planning and and and deliberation and thought that has to go into things that you know, if you're straight and you work in an environment where that's kind of the accepted mainstream, you don't have to think about So you don't have to think about if I put a picture of my you know, spouse or

partner up, is that going to make me have a conversation I don't want to have, or put my job at risk or all these things. You just you sort of do it, and then you know, if that isn't your situation, you're kind of stuck in this position where you like, do I want to politicize my identity, all of these questions that a lot of people at the

luxury of not thinking about. Yeah, that's sort of like, that's sort of just the privilege of being in the majority, I think, and until um society shifts in a way where it's completely quote unquote normal, it's it's just like in the majority. For people to be queer at work, I think that's always going to be a thing that everybody has to negotiate. I mean, at this at this job UM at lecent Our, our team Nancy were majority queer,

so I've never had to think about that. But I can see absolutely any other job that we've been in where I had to negotiate that without even thinking about it. Just you always just know that it's a thing that you have to negotiate. Right, Well, I think there's two interesting things here. I mean, like I remember UM for the first episode, I talked to a coworker who sort of throughout this challenge where he was like, just try

to go a day and not mention your partner. Just try in casual conversation, you know, someone asks you what you're doing for the weekend, you know, you have to think about do I mention my partner that we're doing this thing together. So there's there's I think a camp of thinking that is like it just comes up all the time. I think one thing that surprised us in the results of this survey too, is people who came back and really said, it doesn't feel relevant to share

my sexuality, to share my gender identity. It's a thing that I don't feel. It's not that I am ashamed, it's not that I am in the closet, it's that I just don't think it's something that I want to talk about at work. Um, So there's definitely that out there of people who feel like it doesn't have a place in the workplace, even if they are out in their own lives. Yeah, it seems like there are just so many subtle ways people can experience being gay at

work that aren't necessarily outright discrimination exactly. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on and talking to us. Yeah, and we look forward to the big reveal episode coming up where you share your the results of the all of the research you've been doing with with your listeners. Stay tuned for that episode. Magic episode, throw the cape over and be like here it is with you. Thank you so much for having us. Thank you guys. And Kathie and Tobin's current set up, they said they don't

really have to even think about their sexual identities. They said that most of the people they work with are queer and they can come to work and just do work, and that's kind of the ideal. The former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Marty Schavaz, said that's exactly why he encouraged people to be out at work, because then they can bring their whole selves to work and therefore be happier, healthier,

and more productive, which makes sense. There was another survey of lgbt Q business leaders that found that people who were in the closet said they were spending way too much energy pretending to be straight and as a result that they weren't working as hard for their company. I mean, it makes sense, like if you have to think about your sex life basically at work and how it could hurt your job, I don't know how you would be able to do your job to the best of your ability.

It does seem like the ideal scenario that you'd be able to just be open and not have to think too much about sharing your identity with your colleagues or your boss, UM, and of course there's a productivity angle too, you know. Then again, the experiences on this as we're learning, are so varied that there are so many layers of things that you have to think about that everybody's experience

is different. So that's why I'm really looking forward to opening Cathy's upcoming episode UM sharing all their listener feedback. And with that, let's move on to half bake takes half fake takes. If you have a half bake take, you can share it with us by calling two one to six one seven zero one six six and leaving us a voicemail. We might play it on the show. This week, we have a listener half baked take about breakfast at work. Hi, Hello, ladies, my name is Daniela.

I'm calling you from Austin, Texas, and uh I guess my half baked take today is you know, if you have some type of power over you know, the organization spurs and you know you're in a position where you can actually bring you know, breakfast with the entire organization, just please let you know the workers know that you're doing that. Some of us try to wait a healthy Um, you know lifestyle, and you know, put a lot of

work in the morning to get a healthy breakfast. And sometimes, you know, every once in a while, having breakfast at the company's a time saver. So I don't know, I just don't surprises with a bunch of a lot of yummy food. Uh. And you know we can do even need it because we would already have breakfast. So I don't know. So anyway, thanks so much, keep probably good work. I love it, and uh feel next time. By Becca,

I feel like this just happened to you. Recently, there was a a sort of impromptu big meeting at work where donuts were served, and everybody was talking about the donuts afterwards, and you were like, well, I didn't know there was gonna be breakfast, so I ate breakfast at home. And you were disappointed. You're right, that did happen. I

completely forgot. Also, I was disappointed. And then also I felt like people were judging me for not eating the dough Yeah, they thought you you were too good, too good for you delicious doughnut. I'm not too good, I'm too full. He's absolutely right. Let people know if breakfast or a lunch for that matter, will be served at a meeting, because people do plan their plan their meals around these things. Becca, what's your hat big take this week?

This take is about my Instagram feed and how basically I'm obsessed with my niece and all I want to do is post pictures of her. But I've understand what she's extremely she's extremely cute, and how my Instagram feed is basically just ways that I can post enough pictures in between the nice pictures. It's like I try to post pictures of other things just so I can get to another picture of her. What is the correct number of pictures to buffer the nice pictures? I don't know.

I don't know. Like I posted like two or three of her in a row, and I felt like that was far too many, um, and then I was like, I'll post some other jokes and like scenery. And then I was like, no, I can't. It's time I did it. I sort of do the same thing UM with my son, where I'm like, okay, it's been four pictures of him in a row. Let me post a picture of something funny on the sidewalk to make it look like I

think about anything else exactly. I think someone needs I would love if someone took this take up a notch and told us the right ratio the take is two half right now, we don't know that. Somebody needs to do the mass. Maybe like a physicist or a scientist. Yeah, someone with a PhD. Yeah, tweet at us, Francesca, what's your half? Big take? Mine is also a picture themed. This is a very nice thing you can do for

the people in your life. If you have, let's say, been to a party and you have picture is of your friends in your phone that are flattering, where your friends look good, just send it to them. You might not want to post the picture yourself. It may not be that important to you to put on your social media. But you know people have a hard time finding picture good pictures of themselves to post on social media. So just just send a picture to somebody and they'll totally

appreciate it. I think you do run the risk of them thinking it's a bad picture of themselves. This just happened to me, But then it's up to them to post it, right. So it's like you have basically, if you have a if I have a picture of you where you look good, I have this and I don't do anything with it. Then I just have this like little pot of gold that I'm keeping stashed away in my phone and I'm not doing anything with it. I

could just give it to you. Side conversation, what is up with pictures that other people think look good where you think you look bad? I hate that. Well, there's always the thing of like one person in the picture looks good and like I know, I scan pictures for like they look it, and then I'll show it to somebody and be like, oh, isn't this a great picture of us? And what I really mean is like, this is a good picture of me. I don't really care

how you look. Many half big takes once then yeah, and this has been half big takes, half baked takes. Thanks for listening to game Plan. You can find me on Twitter at Francesca today and I'm at rs Greenfield. You can always call in our hotline at two on two six one seven zero one six six and leave half big takes are your thoughts, opinions, just say hi.

If you like more Becca and Francesca in your inbox, you can subscribe to our newsletter just by going to Bloomberg dot com slash Newsletters and checking the game Plan box. If you like the show, head on over to Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen and rate and review and subscribe. Yeah, we just got a new one. I noticed. Becca always notices. This show is produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson, Head of Podcasts. Is me see you next week? Bye?

And that's not the only thing, And that's not the only time I can miss out however I want. Yeah,